“Sports can bring amazing analogies” for ICT teams, he says at the
recent CIO100 events in Auckland and Wellington.

He likens the All Blacks to a cross functional team that is prepared
for the long journey ahead and for a particular moment, the Rugby World Cup Final.

In contrast, an ill-prepared team looks scrawny across the field;
and not even armed properly. Yes, like the rugby player holding a tennis
racket, who obviously practiced for a different game.

In the same manner, when CIOs are organising their teams, they
need to find the best technicians that they can possibly source. The members
should have the aspiration to be part of a world class unit, and be willing to
share what they know about their craft, says Olivier.

Going back to the sports analogy, the team will train to play
harder and harder opponents, learning repeatedly from each game. Every couple
of weeks they will play with a new team and after every single game, the team gets
together and has a thinking conversation (aided by analytics) on what went
well, what worked and what didn’t.

Let us go and experiment with as many different practices as we possibly can, figure out what are the appropriate practices for us to get there, whether it be agile or lean.

Dawie Olivier, Westpac NZ

The key is that the team plays together all the time, says
Olivier. They understand each other’s roles to a point where it is possible for
someone else to step up and support a struggling player without having to be
asked.

Communicating through broken telephones

Olivier likewise shares lessons from another popular game,
‘Chinese whispers’ or ‘broken telephones’ as it is known in his native South
Africa.

A child is asked to memorise the details of a picture. The child
then relays the details to the next child and so on. The last child on the line
describes what was passed on. “Invariably you get some description of something
that has no resemblance to the original picture,” says Olivier.

He says an interesting thing that does not typically happen in
this game is having the ability to ask questions, to turn back up the line and
say, ‘Is this what you mean?’

He says this is because the players are caught up in the
performance, in the fear of conveying the message that they feel they do not
have the right to go back and ask the questions.

And yet, he says, 50 years of software development have been done
this way.

'50 years of software development have been done this way.'

He describes the process” “I have a great idea. I pass it on to
somebody. It gets elaborated on down the chain but everybody is only
responsible for this little piece of work….20 per cent here, 20 per cent there,
which means at the end of the day, no-one is married to any piece of work at
all.”

Juxtapose this with joining one’s mates in a barbie gathering. One
of them approaches you and says the banking app developed by your team has
changed his life. It has given him more time to decide on his mortgage and
essentially changed the way he interacts with the bank.

“You feel a warm glow and satisfaction because you know exactly
how you got there,” he says.

He says this is why culture plays a critical part in building the
team. “If the team feel they are contributing to this great outcome, they start
gravitating towards respect, towards trust, towards conversations and collaboration,
and the ability grow and learn from others...and towards having a bit of fun at
work.”

“When people are exposed to concepts that feel better than the
ones they have, they start talking about it, learning about it, and
experimenting with these concepts,” he says.

“We need to let our team explore their way to the right things.
Once we have created this concept of safety of experimentation and respectful
process of collaboration, the teams can evolve into doing what they are good at
as opposed to being managed by time sheets.”

“Our job as leader is not to be the smart guy but to make it
possible for our teams to be the smart guys,” he explains.

The key is that the team plays together all the time… They understand each other’s roles to a point where it is possible for someone else to step up and support a struggling player without having to be asked. The team will self-heal as they play together.

“Let us go and experiment with as many different practices as we
possibly can, figure out what are the appropriate practices for us to get
there, whether it be agile or lean (‘they are very seldom waterfall practices’).”

“It will be quite a long journey and it puts a fair burden on us
leaders, but the results are startling,” he states.

In a previous role, he recalls a conversation with the CEO who
asked him for advice on this new team that they had built.

“Be careful with what you ask for because the combined
[IT/business] team will deliver it really quickly,” he told the CEO. “You will
not have time to change your mind. Make sure we are testing those things with our customers so we know we are delivering things that they value.”

“The killer app for today’s CIOs and their teams is the ability to
build a culture and for the team to learn to experiment and iterate forward,”
he concludes. When this happens, “Any technology can be your oyster.”

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